The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for loading and palletizing boxes and cartons, especially boxes and cartons containing agricultural products which are sitting in an agricultural field.
Many agricultural crops are harvested and packaged in boxes or cartons for immediate transportation to a market for sale to the consuming public. The most widely known example of such an agricultural product is lettuce, but many other products undergo a similar process. As a result, it is necessary to load the boxes and cartons containing the agricultural products onto a truck for transportation to a cooling facility or a loading facility, wherein the products are placed on rail cars or semi-trucks for transportation to the local market.
To date, no satisfactory apparatus or method has been devised wherein such boxes or containers may be loaded and stacked on a truck absent the use of significant manual labor. Farms producing such agricultural products typically have a crew of five workers who are responsible for loading the boxes and cartons containing the agricultural products onto each truck used to transport the products out of the fields. Typically, for each truck being loaded, the two persons known as loaders walk along the ground until they come to filled boxes or cartons containing the agricultural products. The loaders each manually lift and throw one of the boxes to one of the two persons who are standing on the truck bed and who are known as stackers. The stackers each catch and stack the containers or boxes of agricultural products onto pallets on the truck bed. A fifth person is required to slowly and carefully drive the truck through the fields while the loaders and stackers fill the truck.
As is easy to imagine, there are a number of inherent problems in this arrangement. First, significant injuries to the loaders or the stackers may result from their activities in the field. Moreover, loading is slow, inefficient and subject to the various problems associated with worker dissatisfaction. Other problems with such an arrangement include the high cost of manual labor for retrieving filled boxes or containers of agricultural products from the field.
Conventional loading and palletizing machines are unacceptable due to the uneven surface and rough terrain of an agricultural field. One attempt to provide a device for use in a field under similar circumstances is set forth in Adam, U.S. Pat. No. 4,355,713, patented Oct. 26, 1982. As is seen from a reading of that reference, the Adam device relates to a mechanism by which cartons of agricultural products may be lifted from their resting place in the field and placed on a conveyor belt. The Adam device, however, has encountered reliability and maintenance problems due to the working environment of the agricultural field. In addition, the Adam device does not negate the need to manually lift and stack the boxes or cartons onto the truck bed and the concomitant problems associated therewith.